Bryce Has Always Been a Hero
by Daria234
Summary: Character study with snippets of Bryce growing up, and all the things that shape who he became.  Some angst.  Brief reference to Chuck/Bryce slash relationship.


Written for a prompt from Ash: something about Bryce's past or childhood that leads to him becoming a spy.

Warnings: Includes angst, violence against young people, brief mention of the death of a character who doesn't exist in canon.

* * *

><p>When Bryce Larkin was 5, he wanted to be a hero, so he practiced jumping heroically from the table to the couch, or from the third stair up onto the ground. Soon enough, he learned to land on his feet, and to hang on to his his cardboard sword and action figure while he did it. He tried every day to get better and better, because a hero was someone who kept trying to be better and better and never stopped being brave. Even when Bryce had to hide in closets and cupboards, he repeated that to himself, again and again.<p>

* * *

><p>When Bryce was 10, his father almost killed him. This time, for real. But instead, Bryce's mother had a moment of lucidity - the kind that no one thought she was capable of having any more - and she whaled the back of her husband's head with a wrench. Bryce didn't feel pity as the blood ran dark and full on the yellow kitchen tiles; he knew that he should, but he didn't. His mother ran then, leaving Bryce to the system. But she saved him when it really counted, and from then on, Bryce decided that a hero didn't have to be the bravest or the strongest or the one that people get a chance to thank. A hero is just the person who does what other people aren't willing to.<p>

When Bryce went to his first foster home, and then the next, and then the next, he always pretended to be what they wanted. But it didn't matter. Nobody wanted keep a 10 year old for long, especially whose parents were both crazy, who stared up at them with those big intelligent eyes, who seemed to notice everything they did. One who never definitively told anyone what happened the day his mother became a hero, leaving the gossips of the town to speculate that the precocious boy and the drug-addled mother had planned it all along.

* * *

><p>When Bryce was 15, he discovered science fiction, and he learned that heroes had to outsmart at least as often as they outfight and probably more. So he learned everything he could about any topic the local library would carry books on. And he loved all of these books, but especially the sci-fi, the books (and films and comics) about science and technology and the amazing worlds they would create. But he noticed that in these stories he read, there was always a price to this knowledge and this discovery, there was always someone who carried the burden.<p>

And this stuck in his head, that knowledge is a burden and a hero is someone who carries secrets that other people can't. Soon, he got early emancipation and lived on his own, studying as hard as he could to get a scholarship some day. And once in a while, someone in his small town would exploit or abuse or demean someone else just a little too publicly, and somehow they were found with cocaine in their car or with a gun in their bedroom that they claim they had never seen before when the police showed up due to an anonymous tip.

Besides these hobbies - science fiction and covert and quasi-ethical heroics - Bryce did nothing but study. At school he acted like the cool, nice normal guy that everyone liked but nobody knew too well. Outside of school, he holed up with his books, finding a tiny empty corner behind the farthest shelf in the library, as small and dusty as the hiding places of his childhood. He never got found by anyone but understanding librarians, and never had to tell anyone that he was terrified at the thought of having to spend any length of time with a kid his age.

* * *

><p>When Bryce was 18, he met the perfect man. He tried to be perfect too, or at least seem like he was, so they could have each other at least for a little while.<p>

* * *

><p>When Bryce was 20, the CIA asked him if he could live a double life. He said yes.<p> 


End file.
